A Moab woman who helped cover up the March 2013 shooting death of Gregorio Salazar Campos pleaded guilty on Jan. 7 to a second-degree felony charge of obstructing justice.

Bluesette Elizabeth Ossana, 47, served as a lookout while convicted shooter Brody Blu Kruckenberg searched for a place to dump Campos’ body along the Colorado River, according to Grand County Attorney Andrew Fitzgerald. She also told Kruckenberg how to get rid of blood, Fitzgerald said.

Defense attorney Ron Yengich also acknowledged his client’s role in the cover-up of the crime, which occurred when Kruckenberg and co-defendant Charles “Tony” Nelson were still 16 years old.

“She was there to aid, abet or assist,” Yengich said during Ossana’s first appearance in court on Jan. 7.

Ossana did not address 7th District Judge Lyle R. Anderson. But Yengich said his client admits that she saw Campos’ body at a local residence.

Yengich concurred that Ossana served as a “lookout” when the body was dumped into the Colorado River. According to Yengich, she also told the two juveniles how to destroy physical evidence.

“She did indicate to them something about luminol and she mentioned Clorox,” he said.

In addition to the main charge, Ossana pleaded guilty to an unrelated class A misdemeanor charge of possession of a controlled substance. The Grand County Attorney’s office, in turn, agreed to dismiss four additional drug- and traffic-related charges against her.

Judge Anderson is scheduled to sentence Ossana on Feb. 18. She faces a potential penalty of one to 15 years in state prison on the obstructing justice charge, which also carries a possible fine of up to $10,000.

Meanwhile, Ossana’s 22-year-old son is due to appear at a Feb. 4 preliminary hearing in 7th District Court.

Thomas “Sloan” Dooley is also accused of obstructing justice in the Campos case.

But his alleged role in the cover-up is very minimal, according to Fitzgerald. As a result, Dooley faces a less serious class A misdemeanor charge, along with unrelated charges in a separate drug case.

Ossana and Dooley are just the latest co-defendants to enter pleas in connection with the Campos case; Fitzgerald said Jan. 8 that his office expects to file a related charge against one more person in the near future.

Kruckenberg, who is now 17, pleaded guilty in juvenile court on July 2013 to second-degree felony manslaughter and obstructing justice.

At the time, he admitted that he fired the shots that killed Campos, his mother’s boyfriend, on March 25, 2013. An investigation into the incident found that Campos was shot three times in the head while he slept in a bed at the Kruckenberg family’s Riversands Road home.

Seventh District Juvenile Court Judge Mary Manley subsequently sentenced Kruckenberg to incarceration at a secure juvenile detention facility, where he could remain until his 21st birthday.

Nelson, who is also now 17, was ordered in September 2013 to serve an identical sentence after he pleaded guilty in July to second-degree felony obstruction of justice.

The two juveniles were originally charged as adults with one count each of first-degree murder and felony obstructing justice. But Fitzgerald ultimately moved both cases to juvenile court once the investigation into the case wrapped up.

The more serious charge against Nelson was based on an informant’s claims that he confessed to shooting Campos. However, investigators later determined that Nelson was not present when Campos was killed, based on their review of his phone records and other evidence.

During a July 22 court hearing, Fitzgerald said Kruckenberg killed Campos because several adults manipulated him into believing that the victim was a danger to Kruckenberg’s mother, and that “something had to be done about him.”

Fitzgerald alleged that Campos was involved in drug trafficking activities, which created conflicts with the adults who influenced Kruckenberg. According to Fitzgerald, some of those adults owed Campos money, and they were also angry because they believed he sold chemical-laced drugs that made some people ill.

Kruckenberg’s mother, Corina Dawn Yardley, pleaded guilty in July to two misdemeanor counts of obstructing justice. In a written statement to the court, the then-44-year-old woman said she lied to police on two separate occasions when detectives questioned her.

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